Snap: Water-saving at Bodo's

The downtown Bodo's has recently joined Charlottesville Radio Group as a business embracing the no-water urinal from Sloan, as this photo of the overhauled men's room indicates. Perhaps this kind of move bears some responsibility for low water sales by the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority (though the chair Mike Gaffney blames the faltering economy), seeing a low-use trend, including its lowest September sales (at just 10.06 million gallons per day) since mandatory restrictions were enforced in 2002.

3 comments

Water conservation is the trend in our community. And the more expensive water becomes, the more people will conserve and install low flow devices. Does anyone think a community this size, and even with all the planned for growth in the water plan, can afford new infrastructure that is projected to cost between $200-$300 million dollars ? Raising our debt at The RWSA from $50 million to $250 million or more.

With this new era of cost consciousness on the Board of Supervisors, signaled by the election of two fiscal conservatives, one can only hope that the County will realize that a 200 - 300 million dollar water plan for our future is not feasible, unless they want their citizens to pay $200 a month in water bills. Along with zero budgeting, the county and city officials must tell us how much will this plan cost, and what will rate payers be charged to support this cost .

In an attempt to offer factual information, and to dispel untruths about the current dam/pipeline concept, Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan has assembled the "Red Herring Report "for our community. Here is just one example of the 49 Red Herrings swimming in our community water plan.

Red herring: #37
"We have maximized our conservation efforts"
THE TRUTH IS :
The Demand Analysis upon which the Community Water Plan is sized, assumes a 5% conservation rate. We are already at 25% conservation even though Virginia has yet to change its laws to allow large scale rain harvesting.

Fixing the leaks in distribution pipes, an ongoing project for both city and county, will reduce our usage by another 10% or more. Most toilets in the area are still high flow and soon washing machine retrofits will follow, cutting residential water use nearly in half.All new development and growth will be required to utilize high efficiency appliances and technology. New business, especially the high water users, will be the pioneers of water conservation technology. The water conservation revolution has hardly begun. We need leaders with vision ... not hold-outs to the last century.

If they keep raising our rates and we keep using less water maybe an independent can win in the next city election on a platform of affordable water instead of the present council's one issue mantra of affordable housing. $200 a month water bills might be difficult for the residents of the affordable houses to afford .

hongree November 19th, 2009 | 1:58am

Now if we could just get Bodo's to stop making huge piles of non-recycleable trash every day. Even the people who want to eat in store can't avoid throwing out a huge pile of stuff. It's funny how almost every time I go there, I pass an unhappy looking employee on the way to the dumpster with a dripping bag of trash. I love the bagels, but I do wish they didn't use so much styrofoam and plastic.